Thread: muscle soreness

How long have you been working out?

Rule of thumb is 24hr recovery time before working the same muscle group.

Work through it if it's been longer than 24 and you've been working out now for a while.

Since you are not working out those muscles, why does it matter. Generally you should have 5-7 days in between working out each bodypart.

Originally posted by BabsieGirl
Rule of thumb is 24hr recovery time before working the same muscle group.

huh? who's rule of thumb is that?

2-3 days minimum, and that would be for fast recovering muscles like biceps and triceps, even then I say 4-5 days. (of course it depends on the type of work-out regimine)

Trying to get back into the groove, by doing full body work-outs. Guess I went a little overboard... Didn't work out for the past 5 months..

Originally posted by Prince
huh? who's rule of thumb is that?

2-3 days minimum, and that would be for fast recovering muscles like biceps and triceps, even then I say 4-5 days. (of course it depends on the type of work-out regimine)

Mine I guess. At least that's how long I wait. Mine are hardly sore though. If I work them harder I wait longer. I train legs really hard so I don't do them once a week. It's usually a 3 day recovery time. Sometimes 5 if I hit them REALLY hard.

Mudge and Vanity scared me into only working one bodypart a month... they say if I do more I'll be a constipated monkey...

LOL

I have used a routine before, in the gym twice a day for 2 hours total, doing the whole body 3x a week. However, I would not recommend this for hardly anyone, and is not something you do year round.

If you are in the gym for much more than an hour, or are only doing a handfull of sets per bodypart, you need to change your routine IMO.

If your just looking for general fitness, then working a bodypart 2-3x a week with hardly any sets at all is the way of the YMCA.

Okay....I'm gonna post something...in a sec.

Mudge, that was the plan 3x week whole body in about 2hr sessions... Felt I needed to shock my body into growth, tried everything else I think and that didn't do much good. Harder muscle but no growth...

When it comes to deciding how often you should train, a common rule-of-thumb is never to train a muscle that's still sore from a previous workout. However, a lack of muscle soreness doesn't tell you whether a muscle has recovered completely. In fact, the damage can persist even when the ache has gone away.

Muscle soreness
A good example comes from research carried in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences [1]. In a group of untrained men, significant soreness was evident for up to three days after exercise. Signs of muscle damage in the blood were higher for up to five days. Muscle function was also impaired for five days.

However, while other symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage clears within a week, damage to the neuromuscular system (the "chain of command" that transmits signals from the brain to the muscle) lasts for 10 days or more — in untrained men, at least.

Changes to the "efficiency" of your neuromuscular system are one reason why you gain strength very quickly after starting a resistance-training program. In the early 1970's, for example, researchers showed that 100 days of isometric exercise led to a 90% increase in muscle strength. However, there was only a 25% increase in muscle size.

If you do want to avoid feeling sore after exercise, the best way is to ease your way into a new training program gradually. After just one bout of exercise, the repair of muscle damage can take up to two weeks. In the case of extreme forms of exercise such as a marathon, signs of muscle damage last a lot longer. Once the repair is complete, the muscle can tolerate the same task with less damage and faster recovery. Stretching, commonly recommended as a way to reduce muscle soreness, actually has very little effect.

While over-the-counter pain killers (such as ibuprofen) can ease the soreness that manifests itself after a tough workout, they're not as effective at restoring muscle function [3]. One of the ways they work is to suppress the synthesis of substances known as prostaglandins. However, these very same prostaglandins also have a profound effect on muscle growth. In other words, while they can control the pain, regular use of some pain killers could put the brakes on muscle growth.

Of course, if you're constantly sore, the best thing to do is reduce the amount of training you're doing. However, muscle soreness is not generally a good indicator of exercise-induced muscle damage [2], and isn't always the best way to decide how often to train a muscle group. Constantly training a "damaged" muscle can easily lead to a state of overtraining, where you make little or no progress despite the hours of work you're putting in at the gym.


References
1. Deschenes, M.R., Brewer, R.E., Bush, J.A., McCoy, R.W., Volek, J.S., & Kraemer, W.J. (2000). Neuromuscular disturbance outlasts other symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 174, 92-99
2. Nosaka, K., Newton, M., & Sacco, P. (2002). Delayed-onset muscle soreness does not reflect the magnitude of eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 12, 337-346
3. Tokmakidis, S., Kokkinidis, E.A., Smilios, I., & Douda, H. (2003). The effects of Ibuprofen on delayed muscle soreness and muscular performance after eccentric exercise. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 17, 53-59

Naah I'm not looking for circuit training. BabsieGirl Thanks... I guess I should wait then. No fun

Originally posted by jaws
Mudge, that was the plan 3x week whole body in about 2hr sessions...

If you train for two hours, you should be doing a split routine, AM and PM - this is a big reason why it is not practical for many people.

With my training right now, I am 'sore' for 3-4 days at a time.

damn, my training habits are crap...

Everything i know about weight training is because I have sat down and figured a machine out or have watched other people lift... I need to take some classes... because I am investing plenty of consistent workouts and I am disciplined... I supplement and diet well too, but I really want to do GoPro's 3 week workout cycle... but I don't know how to do some of the exercises... also I don't have a workout buddy so it's hard to do anything where I need a spot to really push myself...

B.S.! If you are taking 2-3 days off between lifts you are missing out on gains and will never make it over that plateau of being diesel! Give yourself around 12-15 hours and hit the bench press again.

lol

I've read certain places where people work out the same body part once every month, one day for upper body two weeks later for lower body then another two weeks for upper body and they've made insane growth, every time they step foot in the gym

http://precisiontraining.com/
His name is Pete Sisco and he came up with all sorts of scientific methods to train

Just do the exact opposite of anything Jonwell says and you will be HUUUGE.